The present invention relates to a method and to a device for producing oxygen, as well as to its use in different areas.
Almost pure oxygen is frequently required when a user or a patient is to be supplied, for medical or other reasons, with correspondingly pure oxygen instead of the conventional oxygen occurring in the surrounding air.
For this purpose, essentially three possible devices and methods are known from the state of the art.
For example, so-called oxygen- or O2-concentrators are used. In these, two molecular sieves are selected alternately in that air is aspirated over an air filter, compressed with a compressor and alternately supplied to the molecular sieves over valves. The molecular sieves are filled with zeolites, which absorb gases. By the pressure produced, the absorption ratio of oxygen to nitrogen is shifted in a high degree towards nitrogen, so that almost pure oxygen leaves the molecular sieve, approximately a third of which is supplied to the user or patient. In general, oxygen concentrators are defect-ridden and susceptible to failure. Moreover, the compressors are correspondingly noise-intensive and the devices are bulky.
A further possibility for producing almost pure oxygen is based on the fact that oxygen, present in the liquid state and kept in appropriate pressure vessels, is converted to the gaseous state by conversion processes adequately known from the state-of-the-art and then supplied to a patient. This possibility has the disadvantage that liquid oxygen must always be available and is associated with a certain expense, especially outside of a hospital.
Furthermore, it is also known that the oxygen required can be made available in pressure vessels. Here also, a certain logistic expenditure cannot be avoided. Moreover, the pressure vessels, which must withstand a pressure up to 200 bar, are correspondingly heavy and difficult to transport.
It is a common, significant disadvantage of the three methods and devices named above for producing oxygen that, because of their specific, structural configuration on the one hand and because they require starting materials to be made available, they are suitable only to a limited extent, if at all, for mobile use.
Starting out from the disadvantages, known from the state of the art, it is an object of the present invention to make available a method, which can make almost pure oxygen available to a user in a very simple matter. Moreover, it is an object of this invention to make available a device, which implements this method, can be handled easily, makes relatively little noise and is light.